With that it swept over him afresh, and he fell back. In a moment or two he tried to rise, but he was weak as a child. He contrived to keep on his elbow a moment, though, and to give a look out of the window. “It came on to blow, didn’t it?” he asked; but there he sank down again. “I can’t stay so!” he murmured soon. “I can’t stay so! Here,——I must tell you. Georgie, get out the spy-glass, and go up on the roof and look over. I’ve had a dream, I tell you! I’ve had a dream. Not that either,——but it’s just stamped on me! It was like a storm,——and I dreamed that that schooner——the Flyaway——had parted. And the half of her’s crashed down just as she broke, and Faith and that man are high up on the bows in the middle of the South Breaker! Make haste, Georgie! Christ! make haste!” I flew to the drawers and opened them, and began to put the spy-glass together. Suddenly he cried out again,—— “O, here’s where the fault was! What right had I ever to marry the child, not loving her? I bound her! I crushed her! I stifled her! If she lives, it is my sin; if she dies, I murder her!” He hid his face, as he spoke, so that his voice came thick, and great choking groans rent their way up from his heart. All at once, as I looked up, there stood mother, in her long white gown, beside the bed, and bending over and taking Dan’s hot head in her two hands. “Behold, He cometh with clouds!” she whispered. It always did seem to me as if mother had the imposition of hands,——perhaps every one feels just so about their mother,——but only her touch always lightens an ache for me, whether it’s in the heart or the head. “O Aunt Rhody,” said Dan, looking up in her face with his distracted eyes, “can’t you help me?” “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help,” said mother. “There’s no help there!” called Dan. “There’s no God there! He wouldn’t have let a little child run into her damnation!” “Hush, hush, Dan!” murmured mother. “Faith never can have been at sea in such a night as this, and not have felt God’s hand snatching her out of sin. If she lives, she’s a changed woman; and if she dies, her soul is whitened and fit to walk with saints. Through much tribulation.” “Yes, yes,” muttered father, in the room beyond, spitting on his hands, as if he were going to take hold of the truth by the handle,——“it’s best to clean up a thing with the first spot, and not wait for it to get all rusty with crime.” “And he!” said Dan,——“and he,——that man,——Gabriel!” “Between the saddle and the ground If mercy’s asked, mercy’s found,” said I. “Are you there yet, Georgie?” he cried, turning to me. “Here! I’ll go myself!” But he only stumbled and fell on the bed again.